


It All Flows Forward

by monabhar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Miscarriage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-28 04:53:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16716922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monabhar/pseuds/monabhar
Summary: Hermione loses her voice and more to tragedy. Draco Malfoy is the Mediwizard assigned to heal her. For both, it will be darkest before the dawn.Originally created for the dmhgficexchange 2011.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his splendiferous world are owned by J.K. Rowling. I do not own these characters.
> 
> Beta(s): Mad beta skillz provided by the offline seadog who read this in bits and frantic pieces. Thank you for your rescue of this story! All remaining errors are my own and no-one else’s.
> 
> Author Note(s): Written in the second person. I know. post-Deathly Hallows. Ignores the Epilogue a million times over. Three poets gave me some pretty turns of phrase. This fic draws on the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle for its explanation of time travel and the resolution of time travel paradoxes.

You wake to the murmur of voices, hush-hushing each other as you rise up from the deep. You know their names before you surface, before you blink dry, crusted eyes and look upon the world.

No word spoken, just the hitching sound that bears within it the flickering demise of those dear countable un-countables: hopes and dreams, and so on and so on and so forth.

Did you ever know a sound could carry the end?

-

They do not tell you at first.

It makes it easier that you cannot speak. They cluck and fuss and look away when you mouth the fatal words. They try so hard not to answer.

“Where is my husband?”

-

They will tell you that it is normal better to push ~~_run away from_~~ the memory of the day that took your voice and your heart and every hope you had for the future. They will tell you that it is better for you to remember in your own good time and _These things take time to heal, Mrs Weasley_ and not to ask too many questions and _Do not rush to recall what your mind has worked so hard to forget_ not to dwell too much on the fragments of the past that have been untethered from your inner landscape.

-

Your mother and father sit by your bedside, and you wish, as you have wished many times before, that you could have been the daughter who gave them more joy and less sorrow, and that they did not have to weep for you and pretend for you and be so brave for you, and, oh God, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, but you cannot say it and you cannot show it, and they look like their hearts are breaking for their brilliant daughter who shines and shines and cracks and breaks, and you cannot show it. You cannot.

You cannot show them how this world has taken you from them and polished you up and pulled you down.

It is hard to breathe. Your mother's fingers tighten on yours. It is so very hard to breathe.

But you cannot show it.

-

It will be a long time before you remember.

-

Your case is given to Draco Malfoy.

You know enough to read between the lines most likely psychosomatic, no cursework found, but you nod and smile and wring your fingers like you are eager for your salvation. And you tell your parents that your cure lies in this world. Only this world can make you whole again.

As always, they believe you. Even if they do not want to.

-

Aurors are strong. Aurors are powerful, brave, resourceful witches and wizards. They defend wizarding society from any and all threats that may arise.

You are an Auror.

Somewhere in all that, there is a lie.

-

When you leave St. Mungo’s, you realise that autumn has evaded you. Your parents provide you with your childhood room, and you sit on your small single bed, and read through old Muggle books about boarding schools and midnight feasts and children who run away from home. You feel you are sleeping in someone else’s childhood. Yours was populated with monsters and prejudice and petty rivalries and enormous responsibilities spread thickly between three sets of shoulders.

You know you cannot stay here. There is too much you do not want them to know about you. Those are the necessities of being a Muggle-born witch.

They know this, or half-know this, and your Dad gives you a mobile phone one day.

“We’ll keep it topped up,” he says. “You keep us up-to-date.” In the other room, you can hear your mother crying. Dad looks red around the eyes and nose and mouth too. You kiss his cheek gently and go upstairs to pack.

-

It is a Friday when Harry and Ginny bring you to Godric’s Hollow. Winter now, you see, and the little village is frosted with snow, and your breath hangs suspended in the air. You pant short exhalations to see the proof that you still breathe.

Their home is warm and bright and filled with love which is like a thousand hot needles beneath your skin. It tears you and tears at you, and you cannot cast your gaze upon James for anything longer than the time it takes your thoughts to form ‘if’.

If. If. If.

You Charm your dreams to the power of ‘if’.

-

You were pregnant.

-

Ginny and Harry grieve too, you know, but their grief is little more than another fact in this dreary fact-filled world. He brings you breakfast with sad but ever-hopeful eyes, and then he turns to his son, and you cannot help resenting him everything that gives him solace when you have none.

You do not want to resent him, but your thoughts are bitter on your dumb, inert tongue and you are choking, slowly choking, on this world that you’ve come to hate.

-

Malfoy arrives to begin the treatment the week after Christmas. He addresses your symptoms, not you, and stays for the prescribed length of time, not a moment longer. He tries spells, reworks incantations and intonations, make notes, and leaves.

-

Who do you blame?

Too many. None at all. Just one. So goes the cycle of your thoughts as you sit and stare at an open book and never turn a page. Never a single page. You do see the words and the shape of the sentences but these are but fragments shored against your fall. And you haven’t stopped falling since…

But then, you cannot remember how you fell.

-

Harry brings you books. Every day. New books. You could research your case, find a cure, find a treatment; but you don’t. And Harry never asks why, and still he brings the books.

The stacks multiply and the books remain in pristine condition and Harry buys you even more; it appears he still has faith in you even if you don’t.

That is Harry's gift to you.

-

One dusky afternoon, the Ministry bureaucrats arrive with Malfoy. They are here to evaluate you. They arrive with their grubby little minds and fingers and seek to calculate how long they can afford to support your loss.

A part of you wants to play the mad woman, deranged with grief and sorrow. A hop, skip and a jump from your current position. You want to send them running for the hills. You want to tear apart whatever tools they think they can measure you with.

And you would have too, but for Draco fucking Malfoy.

You sit—a darkly snarling baggage of unkempt hair and accusing eyes—and your attempts to appear lost to madness are hampered by Malfoy’s unbearable smoothness, his unparalleled proficiency at navigating those treacherous waters of Ministry diplomacy. He folds your silent hostility into a narrative of magical trauma, and soon their heads are bobbing in sad agreement. You become a fallen heroine—a pattern card of virtue, unstained by deceit or dishonesty or unsavoury frailties—who is in the long, arduous process of “rising above” her loss. Malfoy’s words strip your rage to nothing but what they want you to be; you are left a woman without means, without a direction to call your own.

You feel a crushing pressure on your chest.

When they stand to leave, they are tremulous with unshed tears and sympathy. They try to shake your hand, but the golden Mediwizard intervenes again with a tight negative shake of his head— _Touch her and she may crumble_ —and your dead throat thrums with the curses you would inflict on him.

They depart. Malfoy looks at you and smiles. “You can thank me when your voice returns.”

The porcelain sugar bowl on the tea tray explodes in a flurry of fragments. You feel the sharp bite of one fragment piercing your cheek. The pressure in your chest dissipates, and all you feel is the slow trickle of blood down your chin.

He tut-tuts, placidly pulling a splinter of porcelain from his hand without a wince. His mouth is smiling but his grey eyes are stormy, and the thought that you have angered him warms you through.

“Destruction is easy, Granger.” He flicks the bloody shard onto the coffee table; his gaze is scornful. “Living: that’s the real trick.”

The rest of the tea set explodes as he closes the door behind him.

-

You overhear Ginny and Harry arguing.

She wants you to go back to your parents. He wants you to stay. They reach no conclusion before they fall asleep. There is a bone weariness to their voices that makes a slumbering part of you wake in sympathy.

You lie in bed long after their voices have dwindled into soft utterances and beyond into mutterings and sighs of sleep. You lie awake long, long after and though you shy away from anything akin to action, akin to movement forward or backward, you know that a step must be taken.

In the morning, you make breakfast the Muggle way, before the house wakes. You sit at the table with a cup of tea in your hand and a letter with your intentions neatly written out. Your silence makes for poor argument, and after breakfast you hug Harry, kiss Ginny and little James, and you take a handful of Floo power and you go.

Home.

-

The kitchen: where Ron used to make it his business to make love to you at least once a fortnight. He had such a terrible fear of being constrained to the bedroom. He loved to ambush you while you made the breakfast, Banished the rubbish or washed the dishes. His desire for you was always surprising. Your desire for him was always a pleasant yet unsettling reminder of your body for your mind. It shocked you, heated you, twisted and tormented you.

The bathroom: where Ron didn’t believe in ever closing the door, no matter how much you begged him to, and he used to Charm the water icy cold for a brief spell when you were taking a shower so that you would be ‘nice and perky’ when he joined you.

The sitting room: where the walls are falling inwards with books and photographs of friends and family, and that couch is the one where you would put your feet on Ron’s lap while he read the newspaper, and you read a book, and he would rub your feet with an idle hand, and it was comfort, it was bliss, it was...

The bedroom: you stop your tour. Your hand is on the doorknob.

The nursery. Your hand goes to your chest.

You go no farther.

That night you lie on the couch, and you trace your fingers along the single scar that shows you might have known another love worth living for.

-

A letter arrives from the Ministry.

_Indefinite compassionate leave_.

-

Malfoy—unrelenting Malfoy—tracks you down, tracks you home. There is to be no respite from his ‘care’.

Few words this time. Suits you.

He waves his wand around your body in elaborate movements. He takes in the room; he surveys and estimates.

He leaves.

You dream.

-

You were beautiful the day Ron put a ring on your finger and asked that you stay by his side and face the future with him. You were covered with mud and leaves, and you were bleeding from scratches on your face and neck, and Ron was in worse shape with a cursed arm that was shrivelling away to nothing but bone with each passing minute. And it was not a picture perfect moment with flattering lighting and carefully chosen words; it was a moment built to fit everything you were together.

(This seems like years ago and the memory is well-worn, faded soft and familiar through recollection and retelling, but pain gilds it anew, and you have a traitor’s heart and wish it away.)

Yet you were beautiful, because he loved you, and even though he was not sure whether he would live to the day’s end he Charmed a ring from the autumn leaves to bind your pledge. You were beautiful because this love was true and carried the whisperings of many ever-afters within it. And you were not naïve, and you were not blinkered, and you would have been proven right, given time.

The world was beautiful the day Ron asked you to be his wife.

-

The days are simple. You wake, you rise. The sun moves from the front of the house to the back, lemon light seeping to the burnished glow of day and the decline through blue to black. You watch the slice of illumination as it travels across the walls—a moving spotlight, focussing you on the remnants of another life. You sit. You watch the light rise and move and wash and fall.

You watch it die.

-

Mum and Dad: How are you? Can we get you anything?

You: *dumb show: nodding, shrugging, shaking of head*

Mum and Dad: Please, darling. Let us help you.

You: *silent*

Mum and Dad: We know. We'll do some grocery shopping for you. What are you living on anyway?

You: *shrug, rueful smile*

Mum: Oh, for goodness' sake. No wonder you’re so scrawny.

Dad: Protein, that's what you need. Protein and some greens.

Mum and Dad: Leave it to us, darling.

You do. They arrive with bags of potatoes, spinach, winter squash, tomatoes, lemons and limes, apples, rice, pasta, butter, steak, chicken, bread, jam, tea, Nutella, herbs and spices, breakfast meats, eggs, flour, sugar, M&S packaged meals, frozen food, ice cream, biscuits, chorizo, cheese, cream and anchovies. The bags spill across the kitchen floor.

Dad: Might have got a bit carried away, love.

You: *grateful smile*

Room: *silent and awkward with love*

Mum: Mind yourself, pet.

Dad: And don’t forget to floss.

Door: *closes*

Stomach: *rumbles*

The profusion of food is baffling. You sit on the floor; you pull at the shopping bags, and withdraw the jar of Nutella. Twist off the lid, tear through the foil with your nails, scoop out a dark curl of chocolate spread onto your fingers, and lick it from each digit. Rinse and repeat.

-

Knock on the door one afternoon. You open it to Harry. Eyes brighter than when you last saw them, a mouth more inclined to smiling. Grief is being kinder to him than you it seems. You wince; you are unkind and it lessens you. You cannot return the warmth of his greeting, the strength of his embrace; you only retreat and wave an arm to usher him inside.

Tea: over-stewed by the time you pour it, but Harry drinks it down like a man dying of thirst. He is nervous, you realise. You watch him stumble over his words, twist the mug in his hands. He is trying to tell you something, and he is afraid. Of you? Of what he has to tell you? _Oh, Harry_. You want to say. _When were you ever scared of me? Aren’t we the ones who know what lies behind the noise and nonsense of each other?_

You lay your hand upon his arm, and Harry’s smile teeters, and you drop your forehead to his shoulder. He stiffens, as though he is afraid of startling you, but then you feel the weight of his head resting on yours, and you still. There is comfort in this.

After a while, he says a name—a name, that’s all—and that name makes you shake. And he says more too, of _that night_ , and the telling speeds your heart and turns the tea to acid in your stomach; but you listen closely because he is telling you that it is over, that the Aurors have repeated your failure and they will commit no more to this pursuit.

He is telling you that they are giving up.

You try to make a sound of protest, inarticulate though it may be, but you are empty and nothing emerges. You shake your head instead, and Harry says…Harry says, “We will find her.” It is the truth. Harry does not lie; he does not lie to you.

_And I will kill her_ , you say. But he does not hear, and you cannot wish it otherwise.

-

That night, you chase the howling tendrils of memory down twisting corridors. Your feet are never fast enough, your curses and hexes tie your tongue into knots, and in the end you are always left with the same moment, the one outcome.

You face Death. You lose.

And you never see it coming.

-

Malfoy visits. He talks to you of Ministry politics while he examines you and his words are marbles: smooth, round, pretty and useless. Transparent and opaque in turn—a ribbon of colour twisting through to obscure your view. You think that you only ever see the parts of Malfoy he wants you to see.

As a good Englishwoman, the civil thing would be to offer tea. You offer nothing. Only pliancy and silence as he moves his wand around your body, mapping, prying, seeking to peel away the mystery that evades understanding by way of hawthorn and unicorn hair. You are your own mystery until he says, “Pansy put two more Aurors in St. Mungo’s yesterday.”

The mystery crumbles and leaves bile and bitterness on your tongue, your body pulled tight in anger and misery, and you are exposed and open.

His expression is bland, closed. You might call it haunted if you were inclined to romanticising. Malfoy’s eyes are cool when they meet yours, and you remember that it is considered rude to stare at someone. “They say she’s going to ground, using old Death Eater connections to vanish. They say the Department’s going to ‘deploy its Aurors to other “more pressing” cases’. How do you feel about that?”

You discard manners and continue to stare. You notice new things: things like the paleness of his skin, as pale as your own, the sharpness of his features in the angles of his face, that slight tremor in his hand. Perhaps not so opaque. Head tilted, you watch him as he continues his examination, and he watches you, and he says, in time, “Are you just going to sit here?”

Who is he to judge your inaction? You’ve lost more than you could ever quantify to his damned House and its insidious offspring. You would slap him, but you’d hate to be repetitive. The windows rattle while you deliberate over your options. Malfoy laughs, which strangely soothes your temper, but it is a harsh bray of laughter that speaks more of pent-up emotion than amusement, and it makes you wonder. It makes you wonder what he expects you to do about his former lover.

You walk him to the door. He turns and looks at you and says, "Goodbye, Granger." You watch him walk down the garden path, swinging his case to lop the heads off towering dandelions. You note their height, the ragged wilderness of the lawn and shrubbery, the decaying leaves.

You close the door and walk to the couch where you sit down. You turn inward. You turn yourself inside out.

-

You were to the fore and Ron was to the back and you were on a hillside and it was night and you were sure the signs led you to the west because everything had pointed that way and it fit the pattern and you had deduced the pattern and you were never wrong and you couldn’t be wrong now because there was more at stake though only you knew and Ron knew and you wanted to bring this last one in just the last one in for old time’s sake and then you were done until after the baby came but you couldn’t let Ron do this last one without you not even with Harry it had to be you and you had figured out the pattern you had you had you had you had figured out the logic of her movements and it was only Pansy anyway only Pansy she was never very significant anyway and you take a step forward and the world dissolves around you and you step into black into dark into nothing and you only know now that you were wrong and you do not know how or why or in what way but you know that you must have been wrong.

You were wrong, and that is why they are gone.

-

The doors to the bedroom and nursery remain closed. You have been wearing the same five jumpers, two jeans, one bra, three knickers for weeks—months?—now. The couch has received the impression of your body. You sometimes stand in the hallway and look at the closed doors, and you imagine the what-might-have-been lying behind each, and your body tilts toward them both.

-

Spring is coming. It blows in more visitors who tumble awkwardly through your front door to remind you of a world that is moving on.

Visitors like Ginny: pale and sharp, bright and brittle, her red hair a snapping fire piled atop her head. She sits in your living room, and when she looks around you know she sees the dust and the dirt and the cobwebs and the tiny corpses of houseflies and other insects misfortunate enough to venture in here.

“You don’t visit,” she says without preamble. “You don’t send owls, you don’t leave the house, you don’t answer the door sometimes, you don’t talk, you don’t cry, you don’t…you’re not…” She inhales. “Mum thinks you’ve lost your mind, that you’re going to hurt yourself, and we want to tell her she’s wrong, Hermione. But how can we tell her? How can we tell her that you’re going to be all right when you keep hiding away like this?” Ginny trembles and you see the tears forming in her eyes, their liquid quiver as she blinks, and their rapid descent over freckled cheeks. She doesn’t try to wipe them away; she’s not one to hide from herself. Ginny’s always been stronger than you in that way.

You stand by the kettle, listening to it rattle and bubble as the water heats to a boil, and you think that being mute is a wonderful excuse for coldness. You have become numb to anyone’s pain but your own. The kettle shakes and switches off, you fill the teapot and dig out two somewhat clean mugs and a packet of chocolate Hobnobs, and set the lot in front of Ginny like an offering.

From her expression, you can see that it is not enough.

“Buggrit, Hermione.” She grabs you and the air crackles, and she shakes you, and you can smell burning. “I lost Ron too. We all lost Ron.”

You shake your head. _No_. She’s wrong. _I lost Ron_. You want to say. _I didn’t see what was coming and I lost him._

Ginny looks at you angrily but a tea towel in the kitchen is on fire, which needs her attention first. She murmurs the spell and the fire subsides, but her tears do not and, because you love her as you might have loved a sister, you take her into your arms, and you hold her close. One might say that you hold each other, but that wouldn’t be true.

Of course, Ginny is no fool—she knows that distance is abstract as well as tangible—and after a time she sips her tea and dries her tears and says, “We’re here for you, but you need to be here for us too.” A biscuit crumbles into okay flakes between her teeth and she swears, brushing the crumbs from her jeans. She swallows the remainder of her tea, finishes the biscuit, stands up and looks down at you. “And sort your bloody magic out. You’ll hurt someone if you can’t control it.”

She leans down to kiss your forehead, and then she is gone, and you feel something of your self-containment chip and crack. You look at the charred tea towel in the kitchen.

And you begin to think.

-

It takes you time; it takes you so much time to redefine your purpose. But if you have ever been good at anything, it's self-definition.

The past is frayed and patchy. You lost it by looking away. The future is untouched and yours for shaping. You reach for it and you know, as you have known so many unquestionable things in your life, that you will set its limits.

A promise—the one, the last.

-

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Mum and Dad return with more groceries. They dispose of the rotting fruit and vegetables, and they do not comment on the waste. 

Mum goes away for a few hours, and when she returns she has a box of saucepans under one arm and a Jamie Oliver book under the other. She kisses your cheek. "No excuses now," she says, and you have to smile, because she sounds more herself than she has in months. She doesn’t sound worried that you might break. 

When they leave, you stand in the cold light of the refrigerator, the sharp, fresh smell of vegetables and fruit jarring against a sourer odour you cannot identify. The chill permeates through your jumper, raising goose bumps along your flesh. You raise an arm to your nose, inhale, inhale again, lower it and frown. The fridge and its new bounties can wait. 

In the shower: the memory of Ron’s robust baritone bouncing against the tiles, as he ‘washed that man right out his hair’, only stings, it does not cripple. The water is much, much too hot and the air becomes murky with steam, and you scrub, scrub at your skin until it is raw and pink and glowing with the friction and the water’s heat, and you smooth your hands over your head and body, feeling the clean squeak of your hair. And you feel other hands too, they hold you and draw you, but you need to step outside the circle of all this. For a while, not forever, you say. So you do, and the bathroom becomes just a room, it is just a place, and you are just a woman. 

Emboldened by this display of Samsonian strength you stand in the hallway—naked, dripping, cooling, shivering, teeth chattering—until you put your hand out, take hold of the door handle, and push and push—maybe it’s rusted or maybe it’s your imagination but it seems to resist you—but it is only when you put the weight of your whole body on it that it moves, and you fall into the bedroom. 

The air is heavy and stale, and you feel the disturbed dust settle on you like a shroud. 

Shake it off. Too much of that. You stride to the window, and fling it open and there. 

There.

Breathe.

-

Time skips. Malfoy again; but there has been a lag between visits. Something has disrupted the rhythm, you are sure of it. He is tanned now, golden even in the afternoon light, and his hair has been bleached to white in silver strands. A holiday? Perhaps. But you can see where the tan ends on his neck, the glimpses of white on his shoulders when he moves, causing the collar of his robes to shift. A farmer’s tan, as your mum might say. 

He is quiet too. Reticent. Bearable. It does not sit well on him.

Worried, Hermione? You jerk in surprise at the idea; the question is so jarring to your mind that you think it spoken aloud. Malfoy quirks an eyebrow at your movement, nothing more, and you exhale, long and relieved. You are silent still—thoughts unspoken and unvoiced—so, yes, you can admit to yourself, perhaps there is a concern for him in you. 

He turns to his bag; there is a hitch to his breathing. His movements are slower, slightly hesitant. He holds himself with care. An injury: this is new. Malfoy mutters as he searches for something in his bag, and you remember, you remember his last visit and—

 _Goodbye, Granger_ , he’d said. _Goodbye._

You open your mouth to speak, but there is no noise, only the dry clacking of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Malfoy turns back to you with a tub of salve; he doesn’t meet your eyes, starts applying the salve to your neck. You note the lines of strain around the eyes, the leaden hue of his gaze, the sourness of his mouth. Here is a man who has sought and found and has been thwarted.

He pulls back, reads your expression. It startles him, and he snaps, “What?” 

You smile, less concerned now. So touchy, Master Malfoy. Whatever has you on edge?

But, of course, that is only what you want to say, what actually passes between you is a silence so taut it threatens to cut through your composure. He breaks first, standing abruptly, flinging his few tools into the bag. “Nothing more I can do for you today.” He seems afraid. No harm in that for now.

You watch him leave, and you put a hand to your throat as the door closes. The salve is still cool and slippery against your skin, and you rub it between your fingers, bring it your nose for a sniff: lavender. A standard scented moisturiser, by your estimation.

You stand and walk to the window, look out. Malfoy is standing at the gate, looking back at the house. He blinks quickly when you appear in the window. You look at each other for a long moment and you raise your hand in farewell, and it breaks the spell, and he Disapparates. 

-

You have a dream. It goes like this:

~~watercrashwindfallingroar~~ _Ron, where are you?_ ~~neversawthem~~ _Expelliarmus_ ~~fallingdown~~ _Expulso_ ~~PAINnogoodcantmoverocks~~ _How did she—?_ ~~andtheearthdisappearsbeneathourfeet~~ **NO!**

-

Wandless magic is not unusual, and wands—you handle the splintered pieces with care and lay the fragments upon the draining board—are not irreplaceable. Vine wood and dragon heartstring: a good combination. You will be lucky to find another like it. 

Language, on the other hand, is integral to a wizard or witch. It is through words that you define your will, your power. That is why the Silencio is such a fundamental and powerful spell. There are few things that will make a trained Auror panic as much as a powerful Silencio. Take your voice, take your will, take your power, take your control. 

Silence is your base level these days, but you do not need to be bound by it. 

You stand in the kitchen. You divide the world into its parts, and you are both apart and a part, and you will move within this system of words as you always have. You think the words over and over again. You do not try to speak them; you merely roll them around in your thoughts, roll them into each other, see how they work together and apart, and how they define and move in relation to each other. 

You think of the words as being within a system, as the system of the world.

And you make the wor(l)d dance.

\- 

Diagon Alley basking in the warm flush of a spring morning that beckons the summer closer. 

It is a weekday, so the shops are not very busy. You walk the cobbled streets with little distraction or interruption. You keep your head down, your eyes on your feet; one step at a time, you will walk your way back into living. The sun glints off a window and—

> _Broken images seize you in a prismatic moment, rock through your head and heart, and you see him fall, you see him rise, you see him fall again. You see him die for you._

A witch bumps into you, grumbling an apology that notifies you of your responsibility for the collision. You lean against a wall, shutter your eyes against the too-bright day, catch your breath, then forge onwards.

One step at a time. 

In Ollivander’s, the bell tinkles with a resonance that seems to stir the dust, and the wand-maker stares at you as though you were a ghost. You smile and slip off the sunglasses, which you have worn to meet some sort of Hollywood idea you have of discretion and disguise. You draw a line in the air between your hands and look at him. The wand-maker sets to work. 

Afterwards, you sit in Fortescue’s with a triple chocolate fudge sundae gradually subsiding into a muddy puddle. From time to time, you scoop up some chocolate chips or semi-solid ice-cream. Mostly, you drink the accompanying cup of tea and watch the world pass by before you. It keeps moving, as Ginny told you, and it will move on without you, without Ron’s memory and without the justice you both deserve, unless you force it to do otherwise. 

_Make it do otherwise_ , you mouth the words into the steaming cup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dividing the chapters a little differently than in the dmhgficexchange in order to even out pacing.
> 
> Comments and feedback very very welcome.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for thebigdisaster in the dmhgficexchange 2011. Shortly thereafter I decided to leave fandom and deleted my fics everywhere possible. I recently came across this fic in an old writing folder and realised I have a lot of fondness for it and the pairing, and would like it to remain as one of my few lasting contributions to the lovely world of fannishness.


End file.
